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TOM WAITS and his disciple Chuck E Weiss were in their favourite Los Angeles coffee shop, Duke’s, one night in May 1977, when the police came in to hustle one of the regulars. Incensed, the duo made an ill-fated decision to intervene. As Waits’ manager Herb Cohen recalled: “[The cops] pulled their guns, threw Tom and Chuck to the ground and handcuffed them. They told Chuck they were arresting them for homosexual soliciting and being drunk and disorderly.”
If there was a point tracks Waits’ adventures in bohemia from his 1973 debut to 1983’s Beefheart frenzy , by which time the famously louche Waits had turned 30, got married, quit smoking and was looking for somewhere more sensible to live.
